跨太平洋報導文學：《工廠女孩》的文化越界與亞美記者的「返鄉」書寫

Transpacific Literary Journalism: Crossing Cultural Boundaries in Factory Girls and Asian American Journalist’s Narrative of“Return”

本文聚焦於張彤禾作為華裔美國作家在創作文體與題材上的「跨界」，如何問題化長篇報導文學中隱而不見的作者主體性，以及《工廠女孩》在跨太平洋研究範疇所展現的開創性。隨著文本的翻譯與跨界，張彤禾以非虛構文體寫成的《工廠女孩》成了讀者瞭解當代中國底層與國家經濟發展的論述場域，中文與英文讀者爭相詮釋女性民工作為文化符碼所代表的社會意義與文化想像。本文企圖藉由亞裔美國報導文學作家張彤禾的《工廠女孩》，探討報導文學作者的族裔身分如何中介與形塑當代英文讀者對於中國女性民工的理解。本文透過分析張彤禾在《工廠女孩》敘事中的自我揭露與家族史的書寫，探究族裔報導文學作家作為報導客體「內部的他者」的議題，問題化美國報導文學書寫與研究中隱而不見的種族／族裔。同時，本文梳理張彤禾在書中將祖父與民工故事並置的敘事策略，闡述《工廠女孩》書中多重遷移與勞動的敘事軸線何以作為跨太平洋研究的敘事範例。

The article focuses on how border-crossings are thematized through the genre of literary reportage in Leslie T. Chang’s Factory Girls. Such intervention problematizes the invisibility of the writer’s subject in literary journalism and explores how the text can be read as an example of transpacific studies. As Factory Girls is translated and circulated across borders, it also becomes a site of contestation for subalterns and economic development in China. This can be seen in how both Chinese and English readers are eager to explore female migrant workers as a symbol of cultural imagination in contemporary China. In light of Chang’s own Asian Americanness as formulated by the text, the article discusses how the ethnicity of nonfiction writer mediates and shapes readers’understanding of Chinese rural migrant workers in the West. I focus on the (dis)appearance of Chang’s Chinese American identity and her family history in the narrative, while examining how her inside-outsider perspective problematizes the issue of race and ethnicity in literary journalism. Through reading Chang’s two (un)paralleled stories of movements and migration—her grandfather’s and rural migrants’life narratives—I argue that Factory Girls can be read as a paradigmatic work of transpacific studies.